Gouda news, everyone! Stop feeling so bleu and cheese the day because you’d feta believe there is something to celebrate! I camembert the last time my taste buds were so excited. Sweet dreams are made of cheese and today is the day to chase those dreams. Those tasty, delicious dreams.
“Do you like-a more cheese?”
“I like-a more cheese too!” In fact, I love cheese. Cheese has been a steadfast companion throughout the triumphs and tribulations in my life. Cheese just gets me, y’know. It was also the best way to get calcium into my body as I was growing up, since I did not and do not care for milk. Mmmm cheese; talk curdy to me! And today is a day for turophiles like me and, presumably, vast swaths of you: National Cheese Lovers’ Day!
No one seems to really know how National Cheese Lovers’ Day came about. It’s possible that it was created by a large-scale cheesemaking operation; National Cheddar Day was created by Tillamook and National String Cheese Day was established by Galbani Cheese. Since I don’t know who to credit for a whole day celebrating our relationship with our beloved cheeses, I’m going to imagine that it appeared on the scene organically and, possibly, accidentally much like cheese itself appears in the historical record. While there had been evidence of dairy farming as far back as nine thousand years ago, there was no evidence of cheesemaking until *bloop* it suddenly appears around 5,500 BC: Neolithic farmers in Poland were making cheese! It was almost certainly not a complex cheese but rather something more akin to cottage cheese or ricotta; nevertheless! Cheese!
Photo by Christoph Schütz : A large wheel of raw Alpine cheese sits on a wood table; a person in a white apron is cutting into the cheese.
The prevailing theory is that cheese was an accidental byproduct of other aspects of early agriculture. The domestication of livestock was necessary to have milk and to make use of ruminants’ (cows, buffalo, sheep, goat, etc.) stomachs and other leakproof organs for storage and transport; milk stored in these bladder-like organs was introduced to rennet, an enzyme present in ruminants’ stomachs. Combine the milk and the rennet with a hot, sunny summer day and, my friends, you’ve got yourself some cheese curds. Cheese became a way of preserving milk and, incidentally, made dairy easier for people to digest, as cheese contains less lactose than milk.
So, here we are, curd nerds, with—at least—7,523 years-long tradition of cheese-loving behind us. We’ve gone from a happy accident to roughly 1,800 different kinds of cheese and innumerable ways—from the simplest of cheese boards to honeyed goat cheese tart and from cheese soufflé to the adultiest of adult grilled cheese sandwiches and so on—to enjoy the incredible variety of tastes and textures.
Photo by Mark Stebnicki: Wheels of cheese aging on shelves in a cheese cave.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling my oats and itching to cook from scratch, I find that using an ingredient in a recipe isn’t enough. I need to make the ingredient. That’s why I’ve learned to bake bread, make my own apple butter, make and can my own tomato sauce, and so on. And because this is just who I am as a person, I’m feeling that itch and I really want to make my own cheeses. To that end, I’ve found recipes and/or how-to videos for making homemade ricotta (did someone say cheese blintzes?), mozzarella, and farmhouse cheddar. Check them out and see if you’re up for heading out on one of these homemade culinary adventures with me!
This three-ingredient ricotta comes together in under an hour and can be adapted for use in either sweet or savory recipes and you have a fair amount of control of the consistency of the final product.
Photo by murarenato: Two basket molds full of fresh ricotta sit on a wooden cutting board with walnuts and a jar of honey.
Sometimes, all you really need is a nice chewy piece of mozzarella. With no specialty kitchen gadgets needed and only five ingredients, by following this how-to-video, that stretchy, melty, mozzarella-y goodness is just a healthy dose of patience away.
There’s a link to the recipe in the video description.
Cheddar is my first love among cheeses and, as the verse begins, “love is patient.” This farmhouse cheddar recipe—published by the same folks as the mozzarella recipe—will require the most patience, taking several weeks to age. But for my first cheesy love, I have patience to spare!
Photo by Morana T: Half of a wheel of farmhouse cheese sits in a napkin-lined basket.
Whether you choose to make your favorite cheesy recipe, try your hand at something new, or simply opt for an extra slice of cheese on the cheeseburger of your choice, today is your cheese-loving to shine!
Take it cheesy!
Leave a Reply